Blaming teachers unfairly

I really don’t understand how Facebook works, and resist learning. I am at every moment on the verge of quitting Facebook because I don’t get it, I don’t like it, and I have privacy concerns. But I do check my account every so often. Last night I saw that one of my FB friends in St. Francisville, my hometown, expressed concern that the local school district, which has long been one of the best in the state, scored a “B” in the state education department’s first-ever “letter-grade” ratings. Only one public school district in the entire state earned an A – and it wasn’t theirs. Local folks have been justifiably proud of the West Feliciana Parish school system for so long that this rating understandably comes as a shock to many of them.

Now, the typical thing when ratings like this come out is to figure out what the teachers in the school or school system are doing wrong, and figure out how to compel them to change. I have long been skeptical of this approach. Of course there are bad teachers, and of course it makes sense that a school system would seek ways to get rid of the bad ones and help the others to improve. I get that. I support it. But what this approach doesn’t take into consideration is the possibility that the problem is not entirely, or even mostly, with substandard teachers or flawed pedagogy. What if the problem is with the students and their dysfunctional family situations?

My late sister Ruthie, as longtime readers know, taught in the West Feliciana parish schools. It’s important to know that West Feliciana is a rural parish with a fair amount of poverty. Half the people are black, half are white. When I was growing up there, a huge number of the black kids with whom I was in school did not have fathers in the home — a social fact that has been strongly correlated with substandard achievement in school. I doubt that this has changed, and in fact I know anecdotally that more white kids there come from homes like this. Only a small number of people with college degrees live in the parish (caveat: the Census data are skewed because the state penitentiary is in the northwestern corner of the parish). Everybody goes to the same schools — I mean, almost everybody goes to the public schools, and there is only one high school, one middle school, and one elementary school for the entire parish. The motto for the local schools is, “Here comes everybody.”

A decade or more ago, I was back home visiting and helping Ruthie grade papers. I was shocked by how many fairly easy questions many of her kids were missing. Exasperated, I asked her what the deal was. She gave me an education.

“Take this kid here,” she said, pointing to the paper in my hand. “A couple of years ago, his mother dropped him off on her parents’ doorstep on Christmas Eve, and disappeared. He’s still trying to deal with that.”

And she went through the stack of papers, telling me the personal back stories of many of these kids who were scoring so low. It was a catalogue of adult failure. I began to see the children as Ruthie did: largely as victims of the failures of the adults in their lives to do right by them. One of her kids — and if memory serves, these were 11 and 12 year olds — had lived through two divorces. On and on, things like this. Absolutely heartbreaking stuff. Ruthie said, “When you think about the lives these kids have at home, it’s a wonder they even make it to school in the morning.”

She went on to say that people expect teachers not only to be social workers, but to be miracle workers, and it’s neither realistic nor just.

I had a similar conversation years ago with a public schoolteacher friend in California, who told me how unfair it was that many public schools in her state were held hostage to social dysfunction in the families of their students. Her school had a large number of Hispanic students whose parents were recent immigrants. N., my teacher friend, said that the attitude of these immigrant parents toward education, and their expectations for their children’s study habits, were atrocious — certainly by comparison to her Asian immigrant students, whose parents had even more trouble with the language situation, but whose personal culture was far more accommodating to educational goals. For example, N. told me, many of her Hispanic kids would disappear for two or three weeks at a time during the school year. This was when their families went back to Mexico for extended visits, the teacher said. So, children in these families would return to school having missed weeks of instruction, and without the kind of help at home they absolutely needed to catch up.

How do you think schools with significant populations of students like this did in testing and evaluation? Teachers and administrators stood to lose their jobs or at least have them significantly affected because of these “failing” schools, despite the fact that the reasons particular schools might be failing have nothing to do with the quality of instruction. Nobody has yet figured out how to reliably educate children who come from homes where education is not strongly valued or other cultural barriers to educational achievement, or where there is significant family instability. But we are prepared to blame public school teachers for other people’s failures. This is what No Child Left Behind all but guarantees. No politician has ever been elected telling his constituents that if they want their kids to get a good education, they’ve got to clean up their own lives and do their part in service to their children, because however difficult it may be, there really is no other way. You can pour all the money you want into a school, but if the parents aren’t playing their role in the mission, it will be money wasted. For example.

Mind you, I have absolutely no idea why the West Feliciana public school system got a “B” rating from the state. Maybe there are some improvements the school system can make. Or maybe they’re doing the very best that can be expected under local conditions. I don’t know. I do want to say, though, that as a general matter, economist Robert Samuelson is right:

Americans have an extravagant faith in the ability of education to solve all manner of social problems. In our mind’s eye, schools are engines of progress that create opportunity and foster upward mobility. To the contrary, these persistent achievement gaps demonstrate the limits of schools to compensate for problems outside the classroom – broken homes, street violence, indifference to education – that discourage learning and inhibit teaching. As child-psychologist Jerome Kagan points out, a strong predictor of children’s school success is the educational attainment of their parents. The higher it is, the more parents read to them, inform and encourage them.

For half a century, successive waves of “school reform” have made only modest headway against these obstacles. It’s an open question whether the present “reform” agenda, with its emphasis on teacher accountability, will do better. What we face is not an engineering problem; it’s overcoming the legacy of history and culture. The outcome may affect our economic competitiveness less than our success at creating a just society.

Teachers can help a kid learn grammar. They can help a kid learn algebra. They can help a kid learn history. But they cannot fix a dysfunctional culture and a broken society, and it is unfair that we expect this of them, and that we build a regimen of “school accountability” that punishes public schools for things they cannot reasonably be expected to have done.

UPDATE: Just got this from a parent and friend who lives in the broader West Feliciana area, but whose kids are in a nearby parish’s school system:

Check out this website to get a clear understanding of why/when they are now reporting letter grades:

From what I understand from a letter that we received from [my son's] school, much of this “grading” also depends on previous goals that were set by that parish and meeting/exceeding/falling short of meeting those goals. So, I don’t necessarily know if a “B” is unacceptable or an insult to the teaching staff. Zachary, for example, has an “A”, and if you had just a few select parents to engage from the Zachary school district, you would learn quickly that Zachary will always rise above our other districts. Please note that this is not because Zachary has better teachers, have students that are far advanced for our state, etc. No sir, it is because Zachary refuses to take those children that Ruthie loved and described to you under their wings. Zachary will ONLY keep on its books the students that will get that “A” rating for them. Pisses me off to say the least. Any child that does not show that character, any child that is struggling, becomes labeled and Zachary quickly starts trying to get them out of Zachary and into an alternative school. I am serious Rod, it is pathetic.

So, don’t worry so much about that “B” standing, worry that the teachers in West Fel will become discouraged by that “B” and try to make it an “A” at any cost. It just isn’t worth it.

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32 Responses to Blaming teachers unfairly

Well, I remember back in college we had a lot of fun at the expense of the elementary ed majors, because frankly they were not the brightest bulbs on the Elvis Bush. In fact I went out with one and actually had her convinced that Switzerland had a navy.

Excellent post, Rod. Our three kids attended public schools, and our daughter is student teaching now in a public school in Colorado. We’ve seen a lot of what you describe. I think there’s a tie here to your post from a few days ago about ideology. Ideologies are blunt instruments that are poorly suited to dealing with nuanced issues such as this. The Right shouts “public schools are evil!” while the Left shouts “teachers’ unions are sacred!”, but neither ideology really engages the genuine issues that underlie the problems in public education. I agree with you that one of the problems that public schools encounter is the unprecedented level of family dysfunction in our society. Another such problem is the fact that we also seem to be experiencing unprecedented levels of learning disabilities among students (especially boys, including our oldest son). And the fact is that public schools shoulder a larger share of these problems because (unlike private schools) they must accept all comers. Anyway, thanks for your continuing commitment to principled discourse on these important issues.

Thanks Mr. Pickwick. Our oldest son has is on the mildest end of the autism spectrum (he was diagnosed with a borderline case of Asperger’s), but it has caused huge learning disabilities for him. He learned how to read at age three, but he has a lot of the sensory issues typical of kids on the spectrum, and basically failed out of second grade in an excellent Dallas private school because he couldn’t keep up with the writing required of him (by which I mean he couldn’t physically write). School was so difficult for him to deal with emotionally that we had no choice but to homeschool him (to be clear, we do favor homeschooling, but not ideologically; if private school or public school is a better choice for one of our children, in terms of his or her particular needs, we will choose it). My wife has worked heroically with him — in fact is working heroically with him on math across the table from me as I type this — to educate him. We are fortunate to be in a situation economically that allows her to do this. Julie has worked so hard at this that she will deserve a medal when Matt finally goes off to college.

Now, the day may come once we return to St. Francisville when economic reality forces her to go to work, and us to put Matt in public school there. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for a classroom teacher to work effectively with Matt and his disabilities, while also trying to do right by all the other kids. I know we ask this of public school teachers all the time, and it’s … it’s something.

The way No Child Left Behind works is that if a district has within it “subgroups,” those “subgroups” have to be brought up to “proficiency” along with everyone else in the district, or the district is classed as “failing.”

“Subgroups” can be things like racial minorities, or special-ed kids, or non-English-speaking kids. I don’t know if homelessness is called out as a special sub-group, although that has huge impact on a school district if there are a lot of homeless kids.

Anyway, if even *one* subgroup underperforms, it’s a black mark against the district. It’s not enough that the students make progress; they have to be held against an absolute standard.

As far as “failing districts,” I live in a metropolitan area with about 20 school districts. Each one is “failing,” although some are more failing than others. Two of them have already been taken over by the state and had their school boards dismantled. Several more are to follow this year if they don’t get their scores up.

To quote Fight Club, “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

You can google West Feliciana’s “district report card” and probably find out specifically why it was downgraded. My guess is that one or more subgroups didn’t perform up to standard.

When I was homeschooling my kids, and they had a question about something in society, I would always tell them to try to find the answer by themselves by focusing on two critical things: “Follow the money,” and “Who benefits?”

Who benefits from having teachers like your late sister demonized in such a ruthless way? Who wants the tax money to flow from public schools into private coffers?

I have had similar conversations with teachers who live around here, and teach in public schools in the Bronx. The family problems the teachers and their pupils face are overwhelming, but that’s not the only thing holding them back. One told me that her students had to go to school in a trailer for a year. The regular school building they used to use was leased to a charter school. Her students were not lucky enough to go there. The teacher also had to buy a lot of her own supplies, out of her pocket. Whatever our economic problems, this is a very rich country, and NYC has some of the richest people in the world. What are we thinking?

Who benefits from having teachers like your late sister demonized in such a ruthless way? Who wants the tax money to flow from public schools into private coffers?

I don’t think to be so conspiratorial is always helpful. I mean, it is to a point, but I know folks who are truly interested in improving public education, but who really do have the mindset that sees the education process in a mechanical, technocratic way — as a matter of tweaking the formula to get better results. Because they know, or seem to intuit, that politics can’t do much at all about reforming a broken culture or dysfunctional homes, they define the problem of underachieving students as one of teacher inputs, because that *is* something they can control. It becomes a matter of “to the man who only has a hammer, every problem is a nail.” You know?

Can I please make a request that you weed out the unrepentant and open racists from your comboxes, like “Reader” at 12:27? I know that you want to maintain a free and open exchange of ideas, but all the bigots do is end up poisoning the discource for everyone else. I don’t know why all the thoughtful and sensitive conservative writers- like you and Ross Douthat- seem to have these racists that like to parasitize their blogs, but it’s very unfortunate.

Well back in the 80s when conservatives tried to discuss social issues such as single-parents or fatherlessness they were attacked for demonizing single-mothers, or being racist, or whatever. So they learned to keep their mouths shut. Now it is becoming obvious to all that the problems really are social, that family breakdown is a major problem, that children from single-parent households do worse, and that it is not merely the fact that single-mothers are stigmatized in our society. Liberals were wrong again as usual.

This is a matter close to my own heart since I am a single mother with a 17 year old son in private school. My son was considered to have ADHD, and was medicated accordingly, until a recent test at the doctor’s revealed that his ADHD was almost absent. All his life he has done well in school until recently, even though he still takes his ADHD medication. From what I have seen and heard from other parents, this problem with underachieving boys is epidemic, and affects many families, some with both parents present and active in the child’s rearing, and single parent homes. And I have to say that, although I agree that it is in most cases preferable to have both parents in the home, there are many single parents (usually mothers) who are trying desperately to do a good job of raising their kids, and get precious little encouragement or help from the religious/conservative types that so bash them. I am religious and conservative, but get tired of the constant single-parent bashing that goes on, when there could be much more volunteer effort made by men’s groups (& others) in the church to mentor the kids from such homes, especially the boys. Many of the black churches do have programs in place to do this, but most of the majority-white church sit back and shake their fingers at single parents, usually behind their backs (“well no wonder that Johnny is failing in school, his father is not around”, and comments such as these). Not exactly what Jesus would do in their place. While I agree that many of the school problems are not often the fault of the school itself or its teachers, there have been several inner-city schools (some private, some religious, some charter) who have done quite well with children from these “questionable” (read: single parent) homes, when the parent was supportive of the child’s education and the school’s role in it. I think this last characteristic is the most important: is the parent supportive of the child’s education? In many cases these days the parents simply don’t care, or are too busy with other things (sometimes working several jobs) to be able to support their children in this way. This has affected many homes, not just those of single parents. And some others (yes, including 2-parent families) blame the school when their child gets in trouble. I think we have to get away from single-parent bashing. In the meantime, we should try to encourage marriage in non-shaming ways, and help to mentor those from so-called “broken” homes to help provide the guidance that would normally come from the missing parent. Remember, the single parent is the parent that is THERE, that is trying to do the job of parenting. The question should be asked, why isn’t the missing parent helping as well?

Excellent post. I must say, it’s refreshing to have a conservative writing an essay that doesn’t blame everything but the swine flu on teachers and their Satanic Masters, the teachers’ unions. Yes, there is a small number of teachers who are bad apples, but the societal problems dwarf any effects from these. In the words of the prophet Don Henley,

Anyway, what you mention about Zachary is typical. As the son of teachers and a public school teacher myself for a couple of years, I can say that the amount of buck passing, shifting around of students, and book-cooking is truly astounding. The corruption bred by high-stakes testing of the sort mandated by NCLB is truly staggering.

[the elementary ed majors] were not the brightest bulbs on the Elvis Bush

Charles, what a metaphor! I love it! Unfortunately, it’s even more true now.

Such a huge subject. And no limit to the conversation can be had. But here are some quick thoughts.

Yes, in general, Americans had great faith in education to improve society but now it seems that Americans are polarized into two groups. The left believes that public schools should be used to solve societies problems and the right believes that public schools are the source of society’s problems. Neither is true.

We’ve taken the idea of the factory school and extended it to the extreme. We talk and act in the US as if education is just another consumer product. Parents tend to believe that if their kids are not getting the education they need, it is because the teachers (and the system) are not delivering it. No input on the part of parents or children is required. Education is not, and cannot be considered a consumer product.

We are trying to have the public schools do too much. I have a pretty good memory of going to school (a well-off, suburban NY school in the 60s) and quite frankly, my kids are taught far more both breadth and depth than I was taught and at an earlier age to boot.

The burden of doing too much falls on the teacher. My wife teaches in an elementary school and quite frankly there is not enough hours at school and at home to accomplish all she has to do. She constantly feels the pressure to do one more thing for her class before turning in. And that is just to teach. She has to deal with the very real issues coming out of the home which can be heartbreaking.

And then there is the supply issue, which I continually gripe about but acquiese in the end. We spend substantial sums (over $1000) each year on classroon stuff. I don’t know what would happen if we lived in a less affuent school district, probably support the whole class with their very real needs.

I am very skeptical of education rankings, etc… It isn’t just the blatant cheating that can occur on supposedly objective measures (c.f. Atlanta public schools), but it is also the gaming of the metrics by school districts. We see this at all levels from k-12 through R1 universities (the hoops universities jump through to move up the USN&WR rankings would be hilarious if it didn’t lead to so much waste).

I have removed the comment from “Reader” about the average IQs of mestizos, but will repost it — whether or not I agree with it, please note — if Reader will back up his or her provocative claim with some reliable data.

I’m not so sure what average IQs tell us or even how it could be reliably measured for a large group of students (do schools even give IQ tests? My kids have never taken one as far as I know.), but the education data on the achievement gap between black, hispanic, white, and asian students is clear. This came up during the teacher union protests in Wisconsin. Krugman suggested that schools were better in Wisconsin than in Texas based on standardized test scores.

A blogger then pointed out that Texas has a much larger African American and Hispanic population than Wisconsin does. Furthermore, black, hispanic, and white students in Texas outperform (or match) their counterparts in Texas. Indeed, the achievement gap between white and black students is narrower in Texas than in Wisconsin. Dropout rates were also comparable for white and hispanic students (Wisconsin was slightly ahead) while Dropout rates for African American students was slightly lower in Texas than Wisconsin.http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html

Given the clear and persistent achievement gap that exists, school ratings that do not account for racial composition are not very informative about teacher quality. This isn’t to say that we should accept this gap rather than try to find ways to improve the academic performance of hispanic and african american students. But once cannot use average standardized test scores to determine the quality of instruction.

I urge you to find a place for a sober, open discussion about race, culture, and IQ. We go on and on sermonizing about equalizing achievement between various racial and ethnic groups, and we have never succeeded, in spite of the enormous rewards that would accrue to any organization that did succeed.

If some groups are (on a statistical level) more adept at academic tasks than others, the world won’t end. Perhaps, however, our hearts and wallets would bleed less with futile efforts to square that particular circle.

Some of us are stupid. Some are smart. Some have manual dexterity. Some don’t. Some are musical, some not. Some can find their way through the wilderness where others would die. If we care for all of God’s children, there should be no problem.

Rod: Thanks for the opportunity. It’s mentally lazy for “Hector” to call me a “racist” (a silencing tactic used by Cultural Marxists). I remember Russell Kirk once said something along the lines that a “racist is someone liberals hate because he speaks the truth that everyone knows to be true but has been browbeaten into not saying.” Like Socrates before me, my main concern is the truth, even if it is contrary to the taboos of our age (in this case, political correctness).

In the past decade, we have learned a lot about genetics and evolution. Bruce Lahn and others have found that Europeans and North Asians possess certain genes related to the brain that others do not possess. In the 10,000 Year Explosion it is shown how in terms of recent evolution intelligence probably only underwent heavy selection in certain groups.

Regarding the average mestizo IQ, it has been extrapolated from studies on the average IQs of Latin American countries. What I quoted, 86, might be a little generous, since others have figured it to be lower.

Richard Lynn & Tatu Vanhanen in IQ and the Wealth of Nations give the following average IQs for some Latin American countries:

So it is quite probable that mestizos have lower IQs and the average IQ of California has declined because of them.

This is argued by Byron M. Roth in The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature. He estimates that:

“[The] average American IQ will decline from 98 to 95 by mid-century. This may seem a small drop, but it will have dire effects for elites, because the percentage of Americans with an IQ of at least 120 will fall from 7.1 to 4.8.”

Let’s not be afraid of the truth, even if it goes against the taboos of political correctness. And Hector, people like me will continue to comment at blogs like this because it’s our duty to the truth.

Even if there is some slight variation in academic ability among various races and the sexes, that is irrelevant to our situation today. The problem isn’t that white guys are over represented among Nobel laureates…rather fewer than 50% of AA boys graduate from high school. This has serious negative consequences for society….

Re: I have removed the comment from “Reader” about the average IQs of mestizos, but will repost it — whether or not I agree with it, please note — if Reader will back up his or her provocative claim with some reliable data.

Rod,

I know quite well that you don’t agree with racism, or other forms of bigotry. I’m concerned though that by tolerating racists and allowing them to have their say, you are going to lose the voices of potential African-American and Latino contributors, who might have interesting things to say.

Question to all: why didn’t family troubles and poverty doom children in earlier generations? Or did it just not matter if they failed at schooling because there were plenty of jobs available for the illiterate?

Reader:
IQ is BS, even if served on silver platters. And I say that as someone who ocne tested with a pretty elevated score.
It isn’t hereditary unless you explain the fact that ALL demographic groups have seen a steady rise in IQ scores over the century the tests have been in existence by claiming that, well, gee, evolution has gone into overdrive, and in everyone simultaneously, Also, the same individual can come back with radically different scores at different periods of their lives. With results like that we ought reject the whole IQ flim-flammery as nothing more than the 20th century version of phrenology.
And here’s a radical notion: let’s assess people as individuals without referrence to who their ancestors were, the color of their skin, the countries their family came from, etc.
And while “racism” is the nuke of peronal insults, your claim that Native Americans and Africans are inherently stoopid certainly has the look, smell and texture of racism. You ought learn the Navaho language, wander the pyramids of Teotihucan, consider Incan quipu, reflect on Mayan mathematics, or read a bit about the complex genetics of the domesticated corn (maize) plant before making such silly, blanket assertions about those people who did quite well for themselves in this part of the world before your ancestors showed up.

The IQ data Reader provided comes from a widely disputed and discredited book, the methodoligical problems with which are well documented on the wikipedia page Reader so thoughtfully linked to. These numbers were mostly just made up by the authors. After that he provides some uncontroversial population stats, some distinctly questionable genetic testing claims (genetic tests don’t sort people into percentages of racial categories), and caps it off with assertions from yet another disputed and discredited book, along with a review by the totally-not-a-racist Steve Sailer.

If we suspend disbelief and take the IQ numbers at face value, it is interesting to see that the average american IQ in the early 20th century was 80. I’m pretty sure high school hasn’t gotten more difficult, and I’m also pretty sure that the drop out divide we see today isn’t due to kids going to work on the family farm.

Reader,
You apparently think that your more-sophisticated-than-normal racial terminology (amerindian, mestizo) and apparent dispassionate citation of data (junk data btw, as the wiki you linked to yourself makes perfectly obvious) make you sound serious and more likely to be believed. To the innocent and uninitiated, perhaps. To those of us with the displeasure of such experience and knowledge, however, it immediately identifies you as a member or sympathizer of one of the various white supremacist movements. Your tone, argument, and “data” are all standard fare and could have been lifted near-verbatim from just about any randomly selected white power site. What you’ve written above is a very obvious and definitive shibboleth. If you want to plant seeds of hate under-the-radar you need to hide better what you are.

Rod,
You really don’t want to make this evil welcome on your site. It looks innocuous on its face but, like I said, to those who are familiar with the propaganda of these movements it’s perfectly recognizable. You don’t want people associating you or TAC with it.

First, you should know that broken families, illegitimacy, etc don’t have much effect on academic achievement. History makes this fairly obvious: divorce and illegitimacy have skyrocketed since 1960, but academic achievement has been stable. Sure, kids from broken families do worse on academics, but it appears that is almost entirely due to genetic effects.

Look at it this way: kids resemble their parents, almost entirely for genetic reasons. In a modern environment, people with certain psychological tendencies are more likely to get divorced or have children while unmarried: their kids inherit those tendencies. The same tendencies (on average) cause lower test scores. But divorce itself does not lower the scores.

First, you imply commenter “Reader” is to be faulted because he used specific terms and because he quoted data dispassionately. That doesn’t make much sense.

Second, he quoted from a book written by two established academics, one (Richard Lynn) at the University of Ulster, and the other (Tatu Vanhanen) an Emeritus Professor at the University of Tampere (and father of the Prime Minister of Finland in 2003-2010). Of course they can be wrong, evil, and what have you, but they are very obviously not “a randomly selected white power website”. Their points have to be debated, especially if you wish to prove them wrong. You say their data is junk; if so, how do you feel about funding more research in this field so future studies are based on better data? (My own opinion is that the book has several flaws, but one has to start somewhere. More research will solve the problems).

By the way, racism is a serious accusation (and flaw). But I’m using it in the sense of “denying full human worth to a fellow human being”, not “things I dislike” or “people I disagree with”. If in the future Lynn and Vanhanen are vindicated, would you become a racist because of that? I don’t think so.

Finally, here’s another good source of raw numbers on this (a scientific article, which doesn’t make it infallible – scroll down to the tables):

Lynn (a holocaust doubter) and others who engage in such “research” are open and unapologetic eugenicists. Their “research” is engaged in for only one purpose (to advance eugenic goals) and (even if their conclusions were true) has only one application (the same). I call it “research” because anything presented beyond descriptive statistics (i.e. any conclusions drawn) is invariably shown to be nothing but question-begging and eugenic/racist propaganda with a patina of social science statistical babble. The Lynn book linked above is the classic example of this among the neo-eugenic texts.

I’m also using the word racist in the technical sense (you’re using it as a synonym of “inhumane”). Like I said, these nut-jobs are aggressive eugenicists and their “research” is the same Racial Science garbage that was the backbone of the 19th/20th century cultural myths used to justify eugenics, slavery, segregation, colonialism, fascism, etc.

And, yes, Lynn and his co-travelers are academicians who were respected and defended a decade ago by the bulk of fellow social scientists. Those defenders have mostly fallen away, though, as the extremely poor nature of their data and what their ideological agenda is became evident. The only defenders (of their work) left in the academy are the most radical of the materialists (Pinker, E.O. Wilson, Singer, Dawkins to some extent, etc.).

As for Reader, perhaps he’s just latched onto these arguments innocently because he thinks they lend strength to anti-immigration and/or anti-egalitarian positions. If so, fine. I’m doubtful that’s the case, however. That he’s obviously so very well-steeped in these “data” and presented them in a thread unrelated to the topic (suggesting a Louisiana school district’s test scores are lagging because of low-IQ Hispanic students)–and in other threads since–suggests that he’s a propagandist for these ideas themselves rather than naively using them for other ends. Perhaps he’s a radical materialist but a radical racist/white nationalist is much more likely. These “data” are quoted chapter and verse by any of the more intelligent members of these groups (call to mind the Ed Norton character in American History X, which is an amazingly accurate representation). Reader’s familiarity, passion, and phrasing are identical to those of a pair of my cousins and several former classmates who have been seduced into these groups and use these data and arguments trying to convert others.